Tackling internet piracy

The spider and the web

The latest effort to cut piracy is less dim than its predecessors

SCOTTISH legend has it that Robert the Bruce once took shelter in a cave, where he noticed a spider repeatedly trying, and failing, to build a web. The struggle against online piracy is beginning to feel the same way. On August 25th the department for business announced another effort to tackle a problem that has defeated lawmakers and media companies in several countries. Robert's spider eventually succeeded. Will Britain's government?

The new approach would strengthen a plan laid out earlier this summer. “Digital Britain”, a government white paper, set out a rather relaxed timetable for tackling piracy. Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator, was to establish how much file-sharing was going on. Offenders would at first receive letters. If piracy did not drop by 70%, internet-service providers would be required to roll out stronger measures. Nothing much would happen until 2012.

That plan disappointed music executives. Retail music sales are falling so quickly, in part because of file-sharing, that there may not be much of an industry to protect in three years' time. And piracy is almost as tough to measure as it is to fight. So this week the government proposed giving itself the power to decide when ISPs would have to move against file-sharers. Penalties would be stiffened, too, with persistent pirates losing their broadband connections.

This new proposal has provoked outrage among ISPs, civil-liberties groups and even MPs (which suggests how socially acceptable file-sharing has become). If politicians do not wreck it, judges might. In June a French government plan to sever the connections of persistent pirates was struck down by that country's Constitutional Council. A revised measure has run into trouble with opposition politicians.

Yet the approach is at least less wrong-headed than most of the anti-piracy efforts that have been launched since the appearance of Napster in 1999. Attempts to shut down file-sharing websites have merely encouraged the growth of others. Cutting people's broadband connections, or slowing them down, is also much smarter than trying to imprison offenders; suing people has proven expensive, unpopular and ineffective. John Kennedy, who runs the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group, reckons file-sharers are much more likely to be deterred by actions taken against their friends than by high-profile prosecutions of people they have never heard of.

Despite their protests, the ISPs have already conceded the principle that they can, and in some circumstances should, police what people do online. They commonly block access to child-pornography websites. And some may conclude that it is in their own interests to restrain file-sharing. Later this year Virgin Media and BSkyB are expected to launch music-subscription services allowing broadband customers to download music legally. That gives them a reason to crack down on the illegal stuff.

Such offerings may also succeed in reducing the demand for pirated music. The best way to wean people off illegal but free downloading is to supply them with legal music that appears to be free. For many young people, an unlimited downloading service bundled with an ISP subscription would fit the bill. A survey released earlier this month by the University of Hertfordshire revealed that 59% of people aged 18 to 24, and 96% of those aged 14 to 17, do not pay their own monthly internet-access bill. They may not worry about the consequences of digital piracy. Their parents, who pay the bills, probably do.